Theater: For director, 'Between Riverside and Crazy' is the place to be

Jody Feinberg The Patriot Ledger

Monday

Sep 10, 2018 at 4:15 AM

In a life where so much has gone wrong, Pops has one thing that has served him well – his rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan. But at the start of the play “Between Riverside and Crazy,” the former police officer is fighting to hold onto it.

“The attachment to that home is truly driving him to the point of insanity,” said Tiffany Nichole Greene, who directs the comic drama presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company from Sept. 14 to Oct. 13. “He has to fight so hard against the people who are trying to get him to fold. He is determined to keep that place, because he’s lost so much else.”

Of course, anyone would be desperate to keep a low-rent, spacious apartment on the Upper West Side to avoid a move to a market-based, cramped apartment with exorbitant rent – especially if they’re like Walter “Pops” Washington, who is elderly, disabled, recently widowed and providing shelter to his son, recently released from prison, and the son’s pregnant girlfriend and recovering addict friend.

While Greene didn’t see the play when it ran on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2015, she knew she wanted to direct if after reading the script by playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis.

“The characters are complicated and I think we can see ourselves in them in some way,” said Greene, who has directed many productions in New England and beyond and is the casting director of the Dallas Theater Center. “I’m fascinated with fear and what that does to us as human beings, and I’m interested in the walls we put up and how often the people we need the most are the ones we have the hardest time opening up to.”

As the play unfolds within the apartment during a single day in the first act, it becomes clear that Pops is battling not just to keep his apartment, but to resist pressure to settle an eight-year-old suit he brought against the New York City Police Department after a white officer shot him while he was drinking off-duty in a bar. Pops, who is black, was so badly injured that he can no longer work, and refuses to accept a settlement he feels shows disrespect. But his former partner on the police force, a white female officer, visits his apartment with her fiancé to continue to pressure him. Pops is played by Tyrees Allen, who has performed on Broadway, at Lincoln Center and other major venues, as well as television. The cast includes Hull actress Maureen Keiller, who has won an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress, is Detective O’Connor, Pops’ former partner.

His son, Junior, also wants him to settle, which adds tension to their already fraught relationship. Pops is deeply disappointed in Junior, and speaks harshly to him. “Hurry up and become a man already so I can break a hip and die,” he says, while he is kinder to and accepting of Junior’s friend, Oswaldo, saying, “You my son’s friend and a guest in my home. Guests don’t pay no rent.”

That relationship resonates for Greene, she said..

“I have witnessed men whose sons did not live up to the dreams they had for them, and it’s painful for the fathers to think about whether they had a part in that,” she said. “It’s hard to take responsibility, and by putting that solely on the son it makes a bigger wedge that makes it harder for them to connect. He can be more emotionally available to Oswaldo because he doesn’t have a true responsibility for him or a history with him.”

Yet, Pops also is loyal and generous, allowing Oswaldo and Junior to live with him despite pressure from police and housing authority officials to use the young men’s criminal records as a reason to evict him. He offers to help Lulu, Junior’s girlfriend, get prenatal care and even to raise her baby. Compared to the fathers of Oswaldo and Lulu, Pops is a model of stability and security, and both tell him they love him.

“He’s a very loving man who will never let you know,” Greene said. “He complains about the company he always has, but he always wants to entertain. He’s hilarious and endearing, stubborn and strong- willed.”

Like Junior, Lulu, who is fond of skimpy clothing and seductive poses, attempts but fails to be responsible, even for small acts like walking the dog after she’s agreed to do so. Yet, there’s truth when Lulu says, “I may look how I look, but that don’t mean I AM how I look.”

“She’s been out there using her looks to get what she wants because she’s broken and trying to survive,” Greene said. “She probably is the way she looks when she wants, but there is more to her than that.”

And that’s an important point of the play.

“Guirgis doesn’t make it easy for you to fall in love with the characters,” Greene said. “It’s a collection of misfits and con artists. But there’s sweetness inside of them, even though they’re all tough people who are bending the rules as they try to get by. They’re trying to come out of their hole and do better, and they’re definitely worthy of our sympathy.”

Pops also rouses sympathy because of the way powerful forces attempt to undermine him, an aspect that makes the show particularly relevant.

“People are pressuring him for their own financial and political gain,” Greene said. “It’s very timely, because we’re living in a time where there seems to be no boundaries when it comes to taking what you want, and the empathy for others has sort of dissipated.”

In the most fundamental way, we all are like Pops, despite the difference in circumstances.

“Ultimately he wants justice for what happens to him, and I think he wants something to symbolize that it was all worth it,” Greene said. “All the work he put into his family, his job, this life he’s tried to make for himself. He wants to feel like it’s all worth it, and he’s accomplished something. It’s what everybody wants, and he’s determined not to feel like it was all for nothing.”

Reach Jody Feinberg at jfeinberg@patriotledger.com. Follow her on Twitter@JodyF_Ledger.